In this photography tutorial, I share my thought process behind how I find locations for my portrait photography!
The Tamron 70-180mm f2.8 is a fixed aperture zoom lens for Sony FE mount cameras. I am using this lens on the Sony A7III and share my experiences of what it’s like using this lens for real world portrait photography.
The Tamron 35-150mm f2.8-4 is a variable aperture zoom lens for Canon EF mount cameras and I am using it on the Canon 5D mk4. We are doing a portrait photography in natural light on the streets of Sydney photoshoot to test this lens in a real world setting.
Sometimes it’s fun to challenge yourself as a photographer and do something you normally don’t. In today’s behind the scenes video I set a 10 minute timer to do a whole photoshoot on the streets of Sydney.
Today we are continuing on with our road trip through Austria. Our second half in Austria was a little more overcast so we spent a few of our outings exploring and taking photos in the rain.
Last year while Dan and I were in Europe, we decided to go on a roadtrip with Dan’s cousin Karol and his girlfriend Gosia to Austria. I took the Sony A7III with me for travel photography with the Sony 28mm f2 and 35mm f1.4.
For today’s photoshoot I thought it was time to clean off the dust of my first ever camera that I used to learn how to do photography on more than 10 years ago. I have the Pentax K100D which was a trusty little camera body that I first used to learn how to shoot in manual, learn how to use natural light, how to compose my photos and in general just a way to be creative when I was fresh out of high school and interested in what photography was.
In this portrait photoshoot, I am using the Canon EOS R with the native RF 24-70mm f2.8 zoom lens. We test autofocus performance + accuracy and take a look at image quality + sharpness with 100% crop SOOC photos.
The Tamron 35mm f1.8 is a budget friendly, small and lightweight lens for Canon cameras. For this real world portrait photography review, I am using this lens on the full frame Canon 5D mkiv.
I’m using the Canon EOS R and the RF to EF adaptor to test the performance of Canon’s original EF L-series lenses on their new mirrorless line.
In this photoshoot I took some portraits on the Sony A7III with the Zeiss 35mm f1.4 during blue hour at the beach and on the streets.
The Tamron SP 35mm F1.4 Di is a prime lens for Canon EF mount and Nikon F mount. I am using the Tamron 35mm f1.4 for portrait photography on the Canon EOS R and the Canon 5Dmk4.
In today’s photoshoot I borrowed a friend’s Canon 24-70mm f2.8 and wanted to try it out at a natural light portrait session!
In today’s video we’re comparing the Sigma 35mm f1.4 ART vs the Canon 35mm 1.4 II lenses during a natural light portrait photoshoot. I used the same camera body for both lenses - the Canon 5Dmkiv.
For today’s photoshoot I thought it would be fun to compare 2 extreme apertures while capturing natural light portraits. I picked a few different locations that I thought would suit both apertures and shot pictures of Claudia and f1.2 and also f16.
At the end of 2019 I joined up with Google to host a portrait photography workshop with Team Pixel! Just in case you haven’t heard, I joined Team Pixel halfway through last year and I have found it’s such a great group of creative and talented people from around Australia. It was a really fun experience getting to share my portrait photography knowledge on lighting, composition and posing with the team for the masterclass and then seeing all the photos everyone created during both the workshops! During the workshops in Sydney and Melbourne I also had the chance to capture a portrait of everyone there. These are some of my favourites all shot on the Pixel 4 with either the normal camera or portrait mode, depending on the location! I also edited all these photos with Lightroom Mobile on the Pixel 4.
You can watch my vlog of the week in the life of a photographer below where I shared some snippets of my trip to Melbourne for the workshop!
My year in 100 pictures.
I’ve put together my favourite 100 images I took in 2019 as well as some of my favourite videos I’ve created. To start, this is the first video I uploaded in 2019! I had an older version of this video that I uploaded when I first started my YouTube Channel, but felt like it was time for a refreshed and more detailed version.
My first 2 photoshoots of the year!
The first place I visited in 2019 was Thailand and it was an amazing experience that left me wanting to come back! Dan and I travelled with our friends from Poland and met in Bangkok. From there we spent 3 weeks exploring the cities, mountains and beaches of Thailand - I filmed a vlog and also a creative photoshoot video doing some street photography which was a really fun experience.
One of my favourite photoshoots and videos I created this year was - surprise! - on a KIT LENS haha which is quite different to the low aperture lenses I usually like to use. But as I mentioned, these turned out to be some of my favourite photos. You can watch the behind the scenes of that photoshoot below.
Dan and I also had the chance to travel to Scotland this year to capture a wedding, we decided to stay for a few extra days to be able to explore the Scottish countryside which I have always wanted to see and definitely didn’t disappoint.
I couldn’t miss out on including another favourite creative photoshoot from the year with Kristina and baby goat Ollie!
While we were in Scotland, I had the chance to meet up with some other creatives and take their portraits. I took portraits of Karoline (above) and also Tamar & Matt - behind the scenes of that photoshoot is below!
Since we travelled to Scotland for a wedding, Dan and I decided to stop by and spend some time with his family in Gdansk, Poland. From there we decided to take a roadtrip with Karol and his girlfriend to Austria. Just before we left for the roadtrip we filmed a video with Karol about How to Pose Males who are not Models and it’s my first video to hit ONE MILLION views!! Which is absolutely incredible. After Austria, Dan and I took a short flight to Spain to explore the city of Granada. I still haven’t edited the photos from Spain or the videos from Spain and Austria (I am terrible when it comes to personal creative projects) but I’m hoping to edit them early this year if you guys would still like to see that footage!
We arrived home to Sydney after our trip to Europe in time for my birthday where Dan and I spent the day walking around the Blue Mountains. This is around the time that I joined Google Team Pixel which I am so proud to be a member of! When the Pixel 4 was launched I filmed a review video of the camera and it’s incredible Night Sight capabilities. It was such a fun video to create!
Yet another Blue Mountains highlight was when Kristina, Dan and I took a roadtrip there to take some pictures. At home the air was still but as soon as we got to the mountains the wind picked up and there were incredibly strong gusts of wind pushing us around - we persevered through it and came out with some (in my opinion) really special photos from the day.
The second half of the year was filled with a plethora of portrait photoshoots, here are 2 of my favourites! Shooting portraits with a slightly unconventional 28mm lens and also a portrait photoshoot at golden hour on Portra film which I scanned myself!
The last video I wanted to include felt right to film at the end of the decade - a photoshoot on my first ever DSLR camera, the Pentax K100D. When I first started photography 11 years ago, I used my family’s point and shoot camera to take some creative photos. After a little while I realised that this was something I really enjoyed doing, so I decided to get my very first DSLR. It served me really well to learn all about photographing, shooting in manual, what kind of photography I liked the most, how to compose, how to work with natural lighting and many more things. I think I used this camera for about 3 years before saving up for my first professional body the Canon 5Dmk2 and have since been using the 5D series for all my work. It was really fun getting to go almost back in time to see how the Pentax performs today! Below is the behind the scenes video to see all the final photos and my thoughts on the experience.
For today’s photoshoot I am finally using the Canon EOS-1 V again, this time with Portra 160 & 400 film. I over, on and under exposed a few of these shots to see which style I preferred, then while scanning the film I brought back the exposure so all my images looked cohesive. I was personally leaning towards always preferring what skin tones looked like in the overexposed images while scanning, so maybe next time I shoot on a roll of Portra I will overexpose a little more often.
Watch the behind the scenes of our photoshoot below! And please subscribe to my channel, I upload new photography related videos every single week. I also shared some of the digital images I shot on this photoshoot at the end of the blog post.
model claudia
makeup lidija j
video dan @ i make films
This blog was put together with Narrative. I love using Narrative as part of my photoshoot culling process to see which images from a shoot I should edit and I also use it to easily & quickly be able to put together these blog posts with different layouts of images side by side. I’m really excited to say I’ve teamed up with Narrative and have a 15% discount code for you guys using the code julia15 or just clicking this link! You can download a free trial to test it out for 7 days too :)
And here is my mini set photographed on the Canon 5D mkiv + Canon 35mm f1.4 II. I edited all these photos with my Mountains Lightroom Preset Pack!
In today’s photoshoot we are comparing the 35mm and 50mm to see the pros and cons of each focal length when it comes to portrait photography. This is my (for now) last instalment of this series as I have now compared 35 vs 50, 50 vs 85 and 85 vs 135 - so if you want to see more please let me know what 2 focal lengths you’d like to see me compare next! These are all the final photos from our photoshoot edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset, watch the video to see the behind the scenes of our photoshoot + hear all my thoughts on the comparison of these 2 lenses!
I have a whole series comparing prime lenses and focal lengths, you can check them all out here:
24mm vs 35mm vs 50mm vs 85mm vs 135mm on a full frame camera
24mm vs 35mm vs 50mm vs 85mm vs 135 on a crop frame camera
Gear used:
model shanice
makeup lidija j
video dan @ i make films
All photos edited with my Aspen Lightroom Preset Pack!
The gear links listed above are affiliate links, so they help me out as a creator and don’t cost you anything extra!
In today’s behind the scenes video we are comparing the 85mm and 135mm focal lengths for portrait photography with a number of different portrait compositions and locations to see the pros and cons of each lens for portraits.
I have a whole series comparing prime lenses and focal lengths, you can check them all out here:
24mm vs 35mm vs 50mm vs 85mm vs 135mm on a full frame camera
24mm vs 35mm vs 50mm vs 85mm vs 135 on a crop frame camera
Please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already, I upload new photography videos every single week!
Gear used:
model karina
makeup lidija j
video dan @ i make films
All photos edited with my L.A. Lightroom Preset!
All photos edited with my L.A. Lightroom Preset!